GAT_00:ArkAngel: Don't necessarily blame budget cuts for this, though those are a big part. During the late 70's and early 80's, there was a huge movement to reduce the amount of involuntary inpatient treatment for the severely mentally ill (commitment). This despite the fact that many of them need it. Nowadays it is far harder to do so, leaving prisons as the main place these people are confined to.

It's more that they'll eventually end up there I think. I don't think that it was intentional to throw the mentally ill into prison, I simply think that nobody who thought cutting those budgets to pieces ever thought about the consequences of it other than "Woo hoo, we saved some money, now we can cut taxes and everything is better." Nobody ever considered the consequences of all of this. The mentally ill are far more likely to commit crimes simply because the actions they end up taking aren't rational and end up often in violation of the law. We no longer can treat them anywhere except prison for far too many of them, so they're thrown in jail. Sure they'll get some mental health there, but once they are released they have no way of keeping on their drugs. None. How are they supposed to pay for those drugs? They can't. So they eventually fall ill again, do something they don't realize is wrong, and end up back in jail.

It's an endless and completely breakable cycle of stupid. But we won't do it. Why not? Because it'll cost money, and no matter how much better it will make the country as a whole - a year of mental health drugs and a now productive member of society FAR, FAR outweigh the cost of a year of prison care plus mental health drugs - because to pay for it we'd have to raise taxes, and then the stupid brigade throws a farking hissy fit because they don't understand that shiat needs to be paid for. They just want their free stuff so they can call everyone else a socialist.

And that's just one of the many reason I farking loathe the libertarian, all taxes are bad bullshiat. It completely disregards any consequences of their actions.

So cute of you to put a libertarian strawman argument up. The move away from funding mental institutions started under JFK. He was the king libertarian. Groups like ACLU fought the ability to commit against their will the mentally unstable. Truly the top libertarian institution.

ox45tallboy:ArkAngel: Don't necessarily blame budget cuts for this, though those are a big part. During the late 70's and early 80's, there was a huge movement to reduce the amount of involuntary inpatient treatment for the severely mentally ill (commitment). This despite the fact that many of them need it. Nowadays it is far harder to do so, leaving prisons as the main place these people are confined to.

That rests solely at the feet of Ronald Reagan, the one President who you figure might want people with untreated mental illness to get help. Apparently he figured gun control was cheaper, hence his letter of support for the Brady Bill which specifically referenced his assassination attempt.

Ill informed partisans make baby jesus cry. The change in funding started under JFK, the system was already a mess in 1980.

Earl of Chives:Dude needs to now spent all that 15.5 million on a team of real attorneys and find a way to get about 100 million out of Dona Ana County.

Then you're just punishing the taxpayers.

What should happen is everyone involved loses their jobs and is charged with a felony so the only job they can ever get in the future is one flipping burgers. But that won't happen because it's been long established that law enforcement officers are immune from their crimes.

My story was of Broad River Corrections Institution, the big state max. security prison. Where SC has its death row, and only has convicted felons. You were probably taken to Richland County's jail. I been there once, a friend of my dad's (from the Bible college my dad alumned) got busted for pedophile charges. My dad was in support, thinking it was a mistake until his friend pled guilty. I found the prison to be more pleasant than the jail, but not pleasant enough to want to be there, just a little better. Inmates bored and know they're going to be there for a while tends to take better care of the place. BRCI always had a nice flower garden along the path for the visitors coming in for parole hearings and executions.

The crux of what you're missing is that Vietnam and the Cold War (and its illegitimate love-child with science, the Space Race) took up so much of the budget that cuts were necessary elsewhere. Johnson tried to keep with Kennedy's policies, and Nixon and Ford weren't about to approve anything that didn't make craploads of money for someone. Carter, on the other hand, put together an amazingly well-done study on mental health, and convinced Congress to pass legislation that would have made the US the best in the world at taking care of the mentally ill. Reagan began de-funding it as soon as he took office, and by his second term, the Mental Health Systems Act of 1980 was about as actually effective at providing mental health as the Star Wars program was at shooting down missiles.

ox45tallboy:tinfoil-hat maggie: So I'm wondering what happens now, is he free? I would guess he's in a psych ward that he can finally afford. Truly screwed up story.

From the other article, it appears he is on the right meds now and about as normal as could be expected. The guy didn't belong in a psych ward either, just regular visits to a mental health provider.

Oh shiat, I don't know what to feel now. Glad the guy can function and ....The right meds can make a difference and this story makes me so mad. I hope the guy ends up alright and not taken advantage of.

tinfoil-hat maggie:Oh shiat, I don't know what to feel now. Glad the guy can function and ....The right meds can make a difference and this story makes me so mad. I hope the guy ends up alright and not taken advantage of

If you want to go back to 'depressed', he's also terminally ill with lung cancer, having outlived doctor's expectations. I'm betting he'll give most all of it away to a charity, but I hope he keeps some and to spend on himself and making his last bit of time very comfortable.

Adult Detention Facility:The adult detention facility differs from a traditional linear jail in that there are no bars separating officers and inmates. Instead, they are separated by glass partitions, which allow officers to maintain continuous observation of all inmates and to ensure that inmates are constantly aware that they are under observation. (emphasis mine)

Which would be worse: going slowly crazy in solitary confinement in a room with bare walls, or going slowly crazy in a small room when you know you're being watched. but no one will help you?

I live in Dona Ana county, so I'm getting a kick out of these replies. It really is a decent place to live, but New Mexico politics are all manner of weird. They like building bigassed jails in this state too.

As for what happened to the DA that was in charge? She's no longer the DA. She's the Governor.

So, the victim gets his life ruined, the taxpayers get to pony up the cash to pay the settlement, and the people responsible get to keep their jobs. Maybe it's just me, but that seems pretty farked up.

Goddam, this is horrible. You watch Cool Hand Luke and Shawshank and are supposed to be horrified at two weeks or a month in solitary for the protagonist. This guy wasn't right in the head to begin with and they put him there for 22 months - over 660 days in one room.

Find who's responsible - right farking now - and put them on trial publicly the same way we put Nazi's on trial in Nuremburg.

And just like then "I was only following orders" is not a valid response. This man had rights and you ignored them and abused him.

Gyrfalcon:It has to do with the minimal amount of "mental health care" given to prisoners in jails. Once he was determined by some random guard to be a "mental health patient" and assigned to solitary for his own protection, then he'd have gotten periodic visits from the doctor and/or psychiatric nurse. Even if these professionals really do care about their patients--and often they do--their "visits" are on the order of 90 seconds long maximum. They may only be something like the doctor looking through the food slot and saying "Hey, John, how are you feeling today? Still suicidal? Have you been taking your meds?" If John can't or won't reply, the doctor asks the guards how he's been doing, and then it's off to monitor the 795 other patients and inmates in the jail.

Even assuming the guards are not viciously hostile (and some of them aren't), they're not mental health professionals. They don't get the difference between someone who is really sick, and someone who is working the system (and there are plenty of those); so they can't or won't differentiate between John who is genuinely depressed and confused, and Steve who is malingering so he can get a few days out of GP and work detail. If Steve biatches about how his feet hurt, he gets scoffed at because they know he's faking; when John says the same thing--he gets scoffed at because all those nutjobs complain, right?

Throw in the awful record-keeping in any government agency, let the regular jail doctor go off on vacation or quit because he can't take the stress in the middle of the month; and next thing you know, our man John has been hiding under his blanket for two years without anyone really noticing. What's worse is that it wasn't really done maliciously, it was pure neglect and disregard for psychos in our system. (The refusal to pay, that was malicious) Nobody went out of their way to target this guy, and it happens, to a greater or lesser degree, to everyone who's mentally ill in the prison system.

Unfortunately, I think you're right.

As for the guy's phone call--he probably didn't have the money for a lawyer. He might not have remembered the phone number of a friend to call.

There is one big place to put blame, though--he should have gone before a judge and gotten a public defender.

ox45tallboy:tinfoil-hat maggie: Oh shiat, I don't know what to feel now. Glad the guy can function and ....The right meds can make a difference and this story makes me so mad. I hope the guy ends up alright and not taken advantage of

If you want to go back to 'depressed', he's also terminally ill with lung cancer, having outlived doctor's expectations. I'm betting he'll give most all of it away to a charity, but I hope he keeps some and to spend on himself and making his last bit of time very comfortable.

Well thanks a lot I was already depressed, why yes my doctors changed my meds up and well, I'm not happy./Although I now know how much worse it could be.

ox45tallboy:doglover: That treason you've posted has human rights groups monitoring him often. He's being as well treated as possible. The other guy was in "the hole"

I see you're not familiar with what Manning was going through before he got transferred to Ft. Leavenworth. The human rights groups finally being made aware of the conditions he was held in for nearly a year was what finally got him transferred.

I can't decide based on the descriptions of the conditions of both incarcerations which would be worse. I'd probably go with the guy from TFA as worse, since Manning got better treatment a year after his arrest, and this guy endured some horrible sh*t for 22 months.

The measure of a society is how it treats its worst. Because if the sort of treatment either of these guys received is found to be okay based on the nature of their wrongdoing, it won't be long until lesser offenses are deemed worthy of that sort of treatment. I mean, hell, neither one of them have even been found guilty of a crime, right?

We give them hundreds of millions of dollars in golden parachutes when they retire from their boardroom positions. If they happen to have committed any crimes, those are ignored (unless enough public outcry is raised to force a show trial) or outright forgiven.

You don't even know what torture is. Even with modern medicine you'll be lucky to get 22 hours of decent torture in.

On top of that, you forget how power works. You are granted power by the public. A hanging lasts moments and is very dignified and the traditions ancient. People can really get behind them. On the other hand, torturing some in public for MONTHS? No one in the country will stick with you for that.

You don't even know what torture is. Even with modern medicine you'll be lucky to get 22 hours of decent torture in.

I didn't say it was going to be nonstop continuous thumbscrews. Modern medicine goes a long, long way in the hands of vindictive scientists.

On top of that, you forget how power works. You are granted power by the public. A hanging lasts moments and is very dignified and the traditions ancient. People can really get behind them. On the other hand, torturing some in public for MONTHS? No one in the country will stick with you for that.

That's how, and why, we have perfected the art of extrajudicial renditions. "The public" won't bother to stop watching reality TV long enough to remember.

Besides, I can always distract them by hinting that I may possibly once have kissed a girl who was not the exact same race as me. The teabaggers who don't instantly die of high blood pressure will be too busy being loudly shocked and offended to care about subhuman rights.

over_and_done:We give them hundreds of millions of dollars in golden parachutes when they retire from their boardroom positions. If they happen to have committed any crimes, those are ignored (unless enough public outcry is raised to force a show trial) or outright forgiven.

evaned:TFA:"he was forced to pull out his own tooth because he said he wasn't allowed to see a dentist"

Hell, I'm not sure I would do even just that for $15 million. That's seriously f'ed up.

Actually, that's not even that uncommon. I have a family member in the clink. While being held for 18mos pre-trial he was denied eyeglasses, dental services, etc... (not to mention having to buy their own toilet paper and toothpaste, which is a tax on families) My family member was actually happy when the verdict went the wrong way, simply because once in 'real' jail, bad teeth could be pulled pulled and could get eyeglasses.